Austerity Program Set To Begin Next Week

We are now a week away from the “sequester” another round of austerity cuts. Cuts that will take place despite the overwhelming evidence that all austerity programs do is make a bad situation worse. Even the IMF, bastion of Neoliberalism, has revised itself and said austerity was actually a bad idea reporting that economists underestimated the euro-for-euro effect of cutting government budgets. While the initial expectation was that cutting a euro from the budget would cost around 50 cents in lost growth, the actual effect was closer to 1.50 per euro. Big miss.

The U.S. Defense Department said Wednesday it will furlough almost 800,000 employees — essentially its entire civilian workforce — beginning in late April…

80 percent of Defense’s civilian workforce lives outside of the Washington area. Employees in states like California, Georgia, and Texas are each likely to lose more than $200 million due to the furlough, according to a payroll chart provided by the Pentagon.

The austerity program also targets investments in the future such as scientific research and education.

The Obama Administration – who set this destructive plan in motion – has also released a breakdown of cuts coming if the austerity program starts as scheduled in a White House Fact Sheet.

The logic justifying the sequestration has disintegrated to the point where neither side will actually defend the austerity program. Now both sides are doing the traditional Washington dance of scrambling to blame the other for the disaster.